What I Packed (& Wish I Packed) For Capri - Sivan
01.29.19

What I Packed (& Wish I Packed) For Capri

SO, we went on our first family trip this past weekend. To Palm Springs. For one night. And it was kind of a nightmare.

To be fair, we had a collective 4 hours of pleasantness spread across the 24 hours it lasted, but overall I would say it wasn’t as successful as we had hoped. The good news is, we learned a lot and feel prepared for our next trip to Cabo coming up in February. Ultimately our mistake was this: we were trying really hard to not pack up the whole house to go on this trip. We talked through all the THINGS we use and carefully selected the ones we felt could be omitted for convenience. WRONG!

Lesson #1: The vacation will be a lot smoother with all the things. It might be a serious bitch to schlep, but I’d rather deal with that than a screaming, sleepless, unhappy baby the whole trip.

Lesson #2: Expectation should be lowered…by a lot. I would even go as far as changing the word “vacation” to “trip” because it will be work.

If you can be okay with 1 & 2, go on the trip. If either scares you / bothers you / doesn’t appeal to you, DON’T GO. I have an opportunity to travel to Italy this summer for work and was hoping to extend the trip so Paul and Capri could come for a family trip. I’m gonna go ahead and say that, no, that will not be happening. The thought of baby jet lag, the amount of shit we need, the small spaces [hotels], all of it sounds like an actual nightmare to me. A lot of people sent me messages saying that well scheduled babies are awful to travel with and non-scheduled babies are great to travel with and I totally believe it. HOWEVER, I would rather have my easy scheduled baby at home since that is where we spend 95% of our time. I have now accepted the fact that vacations will be on hold unless the circumstances make sense. I will either have to skip vacations for a while or I need to go sans baby. At the moment I’m not ready to leave her so we will just need to put this part of life on hold.

Me: *Buys every self tanner out there since vacation is no longer a thing*

Okay, so onto the packing list. Here are the things we brought, and below you will find an additional list of things we did not bring but wish we did. Please feel free to leave all the travel advice below in the comments, as we have a trip planned for Cabo next month. The good news is we have a room with a private plunge pool so we are basically planning to never leave the room.

What I Packed For Capri:

-Formula / Bottles: We skipped the frozen breast milk because we didn’t want to deal with finding a way to keep it cold and also didn’t want to bring the bottle warmer. This was fine except the hotel didn’t have purified OR distilled water (they only had spring water) for the formula so that was annoying. We ended up going to the store to buy some bottled water.

-Pacifiers: We brought a bunch since she drops them all the time.

-Shusher: As you know, Capri goes to sleep with this on and it saves lives (& lungs, which you can learn about here).

-Stroller: Obvious reasons.

-Toys: Just a few of her favorite ones to keep her busy.

-Clothing: Obviously it all depends on your trip, but I brought extra onesies, bathing suits, pajamas, etc.

-Baby soaps: For her bath time and also to wash the bottles.

-Sunscreen: For the pool time.

-Blanket & swaddle: For the stroller, car ride, and chilling on the grass.

-Sleep sac: So she would sleep comfortably and warmly, since hers is fleece.

-Diapers & Wipes: & lots of them.

-Waterproof pad: For changing diapers. I debated bringing a doggy peepee pad instead but thought that might be weird.

-Burp cloths: I brought a few since we go through those quickly.

-Floatie: We didn’t end up using this, but I intend to try in Cabo. It has a cover so she won’t be in the sun.

 

What I Wish I Packed (& Will Pack For The Next Trip):

-Dock A Tot: She hated the hotel crib so I won’t make this mistake again.

-Bottle Warmer: We really tried to go without it, but she wasn’t eating the same with her food not warmed. Don’t blame her, honestly.

-Monitor: We didn’t need one on this trip, but for Cabo I fully intend to have her nap while I chill in the pool on our deck.

-Blow Up Bathtub: Saw this on Something Navy’s stories and think it’s genius.

-Yoga ball: Not 100% on this one. It seems really excessive but it’s our go-to for soothing Capri when she’s fussy. I feel like 4 days without it sounds brutal. Maybe I can just steal / borrow the hotel gym’s for a few days???

What am I missing? Anything else you would recommend we bring to Cabo? Let me know below.